As media pundits and mainstream conservatives begin to realize that Donald Trump is beyond likely to be the Republican nominee for President, the search for a viable alternative remains fruitless. Throughout the race, Ohio Governor John Kasich has tried to present himself as just such a moderate anti-Trump.

The one problem with this framing (beyond the fact that voters have nearly universally rejected him): he’s no moderate.

That Kasich is actually a far-right conservative, not a moderate, is no shocker to voters in Ohio. They saw him enter the governor’s mansion in Ohio riding the 2010 Tea Party wave on a platform to “break the backs of organized labor.”

One of Kasich’s first actions in office was to repeal Ohio’s state estate tax, or inheritance tax, in his 2011 state budget. The tax only impacted the wealthiest 8 percent of Ohioans, those with assets over $330,000, yet it raised over $200 million in revenue. Because of the way the tax was structured, this hit local communities the hardest meaning towns had to cut back critical public services like public safety and emergency response.

Kasich replaced the estate tax with an increase in the state sales tax, shifting the burden of paying for public services disproportionately to the poor. In a move that represented little more than hollow pandering, Kasich included a 5 percent Earned Income Tax Credit, similar to the federal program. Unfortunately, the credit was non-refundable meaning those at the bottom of the income spectrum could not take advantage of it.

Kasich’s tax reform represented a huge shift in the tax burden from the top to the bottom—the poorest 20 percent actually saw their taxes go up. The biggest winners in his tax plan? The top 1 percent, who got an average tax break of $17,618.

Included in Kasich’s presidential tax plan is a provision to eliminate the federal inheritance tax like he did the state inheritance tax in Ohio. In his words, he wants to “kill the death tax”. Granted, Kasich is merely repeating the GOP supply-side talking points developed to hide the fact the estate tax only impacts the wealthiest 0.2 percent of families.

But it’s worth noting the would-be-funny-if-it-wasn’t-terrible irony that Kasich has supported an actual tax on death. In his state tax reform plan, Kasich proposed expanding the sales tax to include taxing services, including funeral services.

There’s much more in Kasich’s record as Governor that points to his far-right conservative views on taxes as well as just about every other issue. His time in Congress, as well as his time at the failed Wall Street behemoth Lehman Brothers, also provide a rich trove of data all pointing to the fact that Kasich is no moderate.

While the Republican Party continues to grapple with the reality of Trump as their nominee, and ultra-conservative Ted Cruz as the only potential spoiler, John Kasich has the appearance of a moderate alternative. His record, however, shows a politician far from moderate on inequality.

One of the high-tech world’s most fabled superstars has passed. Andy Grove, the long-time CEO at the chip-making colossus Intel, died earlier this week at age 79.

Grove’s death brought forth a rush of entirely predictable plaudits from Corporate America. Former General Electric chief Jack Welsh hailed him as a “courageous entrepreneur.” Grove, Apple CEO Tim Cook pronounced, “epitomized America at its best.” He rates, added Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, “one of the great business leaders of the 20th century.”

Even, apparently, in death. Grove’s passing hasn’t just brought forth plaudits from plutocrats. The high praise has also come from some unexpected quarters. The American Prospect, a widely respected progressive journal that regularly challenges America’s corporate elite, has saluted Grove as a “high-tech visionary” and lauded “his creativity in reformulating problems and suggesting solutions.”

The corporate-skeptic community has actually been embracing Grove for quite some time. Back in 1996, for instance, the nation’s most visible critic of excessive CEO pay — corporate compensation consultant Grael Crystal — gave Grove what amounted to a free pass.

Grove had just cashed out $94.6 million worth of stock options from Intel, at the time the second-sweetest stock-option windfall in American history. Reporters rushed to Crystal for his reaction. They expected some outrage. They didn’t get it.

“I told the reporters,” Crystal would note later, “that Grove was one of my compensation heroes and that, if anything, he was being paid far too little for his magnificent contributions to the shareholders of Intel of which, I am happy to say — nay, ecstatic to say — I am one.”

A shareholder who spent $100 on Intel stock in 1987, Crystal went on to explain, would have seen that $100 grow, in just a decade, to over $1,800, a 34 percent annual compounded return. By contrast, the S&P 500 Index, over those same ten years, returned a mere 14 percent per year.

Any executive who creates such immense value for shareholders, analysts like Crystal believed then and still believe today, can hardly ever be overpaid. If an executive “performs” at an Andy Grove level, the nation has no choice but to recognize that superior performance and lustily cheer the reward.

We need, Crystal proclaimed after Grove’s $94.6 million payday, “to celebrate his triumph and pray that those turkey CEOs running the other companies in my investment portfolio call up Grove and ask him how he did it.”

The basic operating assumption here: Corporations owe their “success” to their chiefs. America’s future leaders imbibe this conventional wisdom, year in and year out, at the nation’s finest business schools.

“A business school case in strategy,” notes the British economist John Kay, “characteristically features a named CEO struggling, frequently alone, to resolve the fundamental issues of his company’s strategic direction.”

Opinion-leaders in the United States — and increasingly the world — have swallowed this heroic executive worldview whole. Even critics of executive pay like Graef Crystal have accepted, as perfectly legit, the right of “successful” executives to outsized fortunes.

But American chief execs themselves, interestingly, will sometimes acknowledge the contributions to corporate success that others can make, particularly when those others are about to become CEOs themselves.

In 1998, to offer up one example, Andy Grove stepped aside as Intel’s CEO and turned over the reins to Craig Barrett, the company’s chief operating officer since 1993. Barrett, Grove noted in announcing the move, deserved the credit for Intel’s chip-making prowess.

“Craig has been the architect of Intel’s operations throughout the last decade,” summed up a magnanimous Grove. “Craig keeps the Intel machine running.”

That observation, if accurate, does raise some questions. If Craig Barrett deserved such significant credit, then his boss, CEO Andy Grove, was clearly not single-handedly responsible for Intel’s success.

And if Andy Grove was not single-handedly responsible for Intel’s success, isn’t it also possible that Craig Barrett was not single-handedly responsible for the kudos that Grove so generously showered upon him? Isn’t it possible that behind Craig Barrett stood legions of hard-working, unheralded assistants?

And if those unheralded assistants did indeed deserve significant credit for Intel’s success, why did the rewards for that success go so disproportionately to Andy Grove?

In life, Andy Grove never seems to have seriously contemplated that question. With his death, maybe the rest of us should.

For a country with a population the size of Wisconsin’s, Denmark has figured surprisingly prominently in the U.S. presidential election debates.

In the very first Democratic debate last October, Bernie Sanders ignited a national debate over the tiny Scandinavian country’s economic model by saying we could “learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

In February, Denmark made U.S. political headlines again when Ted Cruz warned that if we elect Donald Trump, we would be liable to wake up one morning to find that the president had “nuked Denmark.”

Cruz didn’t elaborate on why he thought Denmark would be a particularly likely Trump target for nuclear destruction. Perhaps it’s because those Danes are just so darn happy.

According to UN World Happiness rankings released this week, Denmark comes in first, up from their third place showing in 2015. The United States ranks #13. At the bottom: Greece.

How do these folks measure happiness? The rankings are based largely on six factors:

GDP per capita

healthy years of life expectancy

social support (“If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”),

trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business),

freedom to make life decisions (“Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”),

and generosity (as measured by recent donations).

The authors argue this broader measure of well-being is a more meaningful way to analyze inequality than income and wealth indicators. They find that people are happier in societies where there is less inequality of happiness.

Happiness might not necessarily be a good thing, though—that is if you’re Donald Trump and you’re running for president. Yahoo Finance recently ranked all 50 U.S. states according to an “anger index.” Trump is cleaning up in the angry ones, with a 91 percent win rate in states among the 20 angriest that have held primaries.

Happier voters aren’t going so much for the blustery tycoon. Trump has won just 4 of 11 primaries (36 percent) that have been held so far in the 20 least-angry states.

The 2016 presidential primary elections — now essentially halfway over — have placed income and wealth inequality right at the forefront of America’s political discourse.

The entire Bernie Sander platform rips the gains of America’s rich at the expense of low- and moderate-income people and advocates for comprehensive economic reforms that aim to narrow the nation’s vast economic divides. And billionaire Donald Trump, in his stab at a populist pitch, regularly blasts the impact of globalization on average American workers.

Mainstream media analysts have generally categorized white working class voters as Sanders and Trump supporters. Neither candidate, the conventional punditry suggests, would seem to have an appeal to more affluent voters.

But this assessment, our new analysis of voting patterns indicates, may not be accurate.

We looked at voting results from the most affluent county in each of the 2016 primary states where we now have data. Candidates traditionally pay considerable attention to counties like these since voter turnout, the research shows, strongly correlates with household family income.

These most affluent counties all have higher household incomes than the national median. Residents in the wealthiest among them — Virginia’s Loudon County — have more than double the income of the nation’s typical household. The full list:

How do the presidential candidates fare in these higher-income counties? Using CNN exit polling, we’ve tabulated results from the Republican and Democratic contests for most of the states where primary voting has taken place. No county data exists for the Minnesota and Maine caucuses, and Kansas and Alaska offer congressional district instead of county voting breakdowns.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump took most of these most affluent counties.

Republican Candidate

Victories

Donald Trump (12)

Beaufort County, SC; Blaine County, ID; Madison County, MS; St. Johns County, FL; Shelby County, AL; St. Charles County, MO; Livingston County, MI; Honolulu County, HI; Rockingham County, NH; Kendall County, IL; Nantucket, MA; Forsyth, GA

Williamson County, TN; Benton County, AR; Dallas County, IA; Loudoun County, VA

On the Democratic side, we see a much closer race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Democratic Candidate

Victories

Hillary Clinton (13)

Benton County, AR; Beaufort County, SC; Madison County, MS; St. Johns County, FL; Shelby County AL; Dallas County, IA; Rockwall County, TX; Williamson County, TN; Delaware County, OH; Loudoun County, VA; Wake County, NC; Ascension Parish, LA; Forsyth County, GA

Bernie Sanders (10)

Chittenden County, VT; Sarpy County NE; St. Charles County, MO; Elko County, NV; Livingston County, MI; Rockingham County, NH; Kendall County, IL; Nantucket County, MA; Douglas County, CO; Canadian County, OK

Sanders scored electoral success with affluent voters in geographic areas as diverse as Nevada, Michigan, and Massachusetts. His anti-economic inequality message has resonated with a diverse array of voters. In Michigan, CNN exit polling shows, Sanders actually tied Clinton with voters earning over $100,000 and won the state’s highest-income county.

Donald Trump’s strong showing in the wealthy suburbs also suggests that his voter base goes beyond the working-class base that the standard media narrative so emphasizes. Trump’s message, riddled with anti-immigrant and offensive language, has found an audience with wealthy voters from Nantucket County in Massachusetts to Honolulu County in Hawaii.

What can we take from these results? On the one hand, the results suggest that a broad coalition of Americans — including many Americans of wealth and privilege — stands ready to support a pro-worker and pro-equality economic agenda that will uplift all Americans.

On the other hand, the results also suggest that ethnic and racial insensitivity and worse runs all the way up America’s economic ladder.

Governors and mayors around the country have been putting forth proposals to cut government worker pensions. They call these pensions “unaffordable.” So far federal employees have avoided this onslaught. But that’s changing. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board has just approved a modified version of a cutback proposal offered by TVA CEO William Johnson.

TVA’s board, the New York Times reports, approved a plan on March 3 that would shift federal workers out of a secure defined benefit pension plan — that would provide a guaranteed monthly check for the rest of their lives following retirement — into a 401(k) plan that would have employees bearing the risk of falling investment markets. The plan would sharply lower the TVA’s pension costs, but deny employees benefits they had earned.

The Tennessee Valley Authority once symbolized the shining successes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. TVA brought electricity and economic development throughout Tennessee and to parts of Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi, some of the poorest parts of the nation’s south.

TVA better symbolizes today the excesses of Corporate America. TVA CEO Johnson pulled down $6.4 million in 2015 personal compensation. Earning 16 times more than President Obama, William Johnson may be the nation’s highest-paid federal employee.

But the real stunner comes from CEO Johnson’s retirement assets. In less than three years on the job working for TVA, William Johnson has accumulated $3,567,489 in his company pension account, according to TVA’s 10-K report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Johnson also had an additional $305,994 in his TVA deferred compensation account, a special account for corporate executives that, unlike 401(k) plans for workers, has no limits on the amount of compensation that can be set-aside tax-free each year.

This combined $3,873,483 in Johnson’s workplace retirement savings, if invested today in an annuity, would deliver CEO Johnson a check for $23,318 each month from age 65 until the time of his death. And Johnson’s pension will grow with each additional year he serves the TVA.

There are lots of CEOs in the private sector who as members of the “I’ve Got Mine Club” don’t think twice about padding their own pockets as they cut workers job and retirement security. But we should expect more from the leader of such an important federal agency.

IPS Director John Cavanagh, Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good Chuck Collins, and Representative Martin Sabo, 1998.

Minnesota Congressman Martin Olav Sabo died earlier this week, after retiring from Congress in 2006.

Rep. Sabo was lead sponsor of legislation called the Income-Equity Act, which he championed for almost a decade. Sabo’s Act would have eliminated the tax deductibility of excessive CEO pay if it exceeded 25 times the average worker pay in a firm. If, for example, the lowest paid worker in a firm was paid $13,000, the corporation would not be able to deduct more than $325,000 of salary as a business expense. After Sabo’s retirement, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) picked up the baton and has continued to introduce the legislation.

Rep. Sabo was motivated by a deep sensibility about fairness for working people. He believed companies should not be encouraged, through the tax code, to undervalue their workers and overvalue top management. He saw the legislation as a catalyst, in the late 1990s, for a discussion about growing income inequality.

One fond memory we have of working with Congressman Sabo is captured in this 1998 photo of IPS Director John Cavanagh and I at a Capital Hill Press Conference with Rep. Sabo. We were releasing our fifth annual Executive Excess report on CEO pay and downsizing. In September, we will release our 23rd annual report.

John is holding a clever prop to dramatize the pay gap between average worker and CEO pay. Andrew Boyd, my colleague at the time at United for a Fair Economy, constructed a small portable Washington Monument, something I could disassemble and carry on an airplane.

The actual Washington Monument, visible from our press event, is 555 feet tall. In 1997, if the Washington monument represented average CEO pay, the average worker pay was equal to 21 inches tall, the size of our mini-monument. This comparison illustrated how CEOs were paid over 326 times average worker pay.

At the press event, Congressman Sabo pointed out how the ratio was growing and the “Workers Washington Monument” was shrinking. In 1970, the Workers Washington Monument was 13 feet, six inches tall, representing a 41 to one pay ratio. In 1996, it was 32 inches tall, representing a pay gap of 209 to one.

Since 1998 the annual CEO-worker pay ratio has bounced up and down. In 2014, according to Executive Paywatch at the AFL-CIO, the gap was 373 to one, which means the Workers Washington Monument would be under 18 inches tall.

The mini-Washington monument made several other 2008 appearances, including the annual shareholder meeting of General Electric. I testified in favor of shareholder resolution to limit excessive pay at G.E. and lifted up our mini-monument to illustrate the national pay gap. As part of my testimony, I pointed out that if General Electric CEO Jack Welch’s pay was represented by the full-size Washington monument, average worker pay at GE was equivalent to a sideways LifeSaver.

IPS did dozens of educational events with Congressman Sabo, both in Minnesota and in Washington, DC. Rep. Martin Sabo saw the dangers of inequality emerging decades before other political leaders. We will miss him.

A culture of impunity, misguided U.S. policy that has pursued expediency above principle, and an unwillingness of Honduras' political elites to reform their institutions of justice and governance are all to blame.

On March 2, in the dark of the night, armed assailants broke into the Honduran home of Berta Cáceres and shot her four times, killing her. The assailants also wounded a Mexican colleague, Gustavo Castro, who survived only by playing dead.

Cáceres was in Washington just last year to receive the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prizes. She was a leader of the indigenous Lenca people in Honduras and had incited the wrath of the Honduran government, which seized power in a 2009 coup, with her leadership against a massive dam project that would have destroyed communities and the environment in areas near the Gualcarque River.

Castro is the coordinator of Friends of the Earth-Mexico and coordinator of a Central America-wide network against environmentally destructive dams. Despite being wounded and traumatized, he is not being allowed to leave Honduras.

So who killed Berta Cáceres?

At the eulogy for a slain civil rights worker in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked rhetorically “Who killed James Reeb?” In his remarks, Dr. King concluded that “we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murder.”

We may never know the names of the people who pulled the trigger, killing Cáceres. As in the case of Reeb, a culture of impunity is to blame. For far too long, governmental institutions have failed to protect the rule of law, to defend the defenders of human rights, to investigate corruption and the abuse of power, and to prosecute those who plunder the country’s wealth. Also culpable is the long tragic history of misguided U.S. policy that has pursued expediency above principle, and, when convenient, was seemingly always prepared to sacrifice democratic ideals for short-term accommodation. The result has been a confusing blend of mixed signals that have conveyed a message that the United States is an unreliable defender of democracy and human rights.

Clearly, much of the blame rests on the unwillingness or incapacity of Honduras’ political elites to reform their institutions of justice and governance, relying instead on force to keep a restive population at bay. The current president, Juan Orlando Hernández, militarized the police and pushed through a measure to deploy security forces to “keep order” on the streets. There has been little accountability for the jaw-dropping theft of over $300 million that was pilfered from National Social Medical Assistance Fund, some of which wound up in the coffers of the governing National Party. The current government also instituted a measure that would enable the president to pursue an unprecedented second term and, in collusion with the two major political parties, pack the Supreme Court with cronies who politicize the judicial system. In addition, the government, despite multiple threats against Cáceres, ignored a protective order from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Responding to pressure, the Honduran government had made some progress in addressing the challenge of drug traffickers and gang violence. But these encouraging developments have been completely overshadowed by the murder of Cáceres.

Intrinsic to the system that killed Cáceres is also the high-handed treatment of Honduras by the United States. A defining moment took place in June 2009 when Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, was seized at the crack of dawn and taken in his pajamas and placed on a flight to Costa Rica, where he was unceremoniously dumped. Zelaya had offended sensibilities within the U.S. government and Honduran elite by espousing a reformist and populist agenda. Initial U.S. government opposition to the coup was replaced by ambivalence and soon thereafter by acceptance. The de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti, placed in power by the coup conspirators, organized presidential elections six months later. Decried as illegitimate by many both within Honduras as well as globally, the Micheletti government was ultimately validated by the Obama administration, hence endorsing a flawed electoral process. This was an unmistakable signal to the power elites in Honduras that democratic principles are malleable. A wave of protests followed that were ruthlessly suppressed and Honduras slid into shocking levels of violence and chaos.

Given this history, it should come as no surprise that Global Witness concluded in a 2015 report that Honduras is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. The death toll thus far is over 100, with Cáceres only the latest victim.

What should the United States government do?

Human rights, indigenous and environmental organizations in Honduras and around the world are holding vigils and marches while calling for justice. They are deeply concerned for Castro’s safety and want him to be free to return to Mexico. They are demanding that the investigation involve a team of trusted, independent, international experts selected in coordination with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. They are properly insisting that the Honduran government stop the harassment and legal persecution of Cáceres’s organization, the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH), and that their autonomy and right to free prior and informed consent be respected.

The Obama administration, which shamefully capitulated to the Honduran coup, now has an opportunity to stand decisively against chronic impunity in Honduras. Members of Congress and Secretary of State John Kerry (to whom over 200 organizations have written) have a moral and political obligation to speak forcefully and insist on an unflinching inquiry into the murder of Cáceres and the safe and prompt return of Castro to his home country. All U.S. assistance to the military and security forces — except for investigative and forensic support — should be halted until the perpetrators are found and prosecuted, and until the shameful legacy of impunity can be effectively addressed.

Until there is justice for Berta Cáceres, there can be no justice for the long-suffering people of Honduras. Washington is poised to play a key role in making that happen.

I began writing a eulogy for Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores years ago, though she died only this month.

Berta was assassinated by Honduran government-backed death squads on March 3. Like many who knew and worked with her, I was aware that this fighter for indigenous people wasn’t destined to die of old age. She spoke too much truth to power — for indigenous rights, for women’s and LGBTQ rights, for authentic democracy, for the well-being of the earth, and for an end to tyranny by transnational capital and U.S. empire.

Berta cut her teeth on revolution. She was strongly impacted by the broadcasts from Cuba and Sandinista-led Nicaragua that her family listened to clandestinely, gathered around a radio — with the volume turned very low, since those stations were outlawed in Honduras. Always a committed leftist, Berta’s mother raised her many children to believe in justice. Doña Bertha — the mother made her youngest child her namesake — was mayor of her town and governor of her state back when women were neither, in addition to being a midwife. She was Berta’s life-long inspiration. As a young adult, like so many others from the region who shared her convictions, Berta went on to support the Salvadoran revolution.

In 1993, Berta — a Lenca Native — cofounded the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH. At that time in Honduras, there was little pride and even less power in being indigenous. Berta created COPINH to build the political strength of Lencas, campesinos, and other grassroots sectors to transform one of the most corrupt, anti-democratic, and unequal societies in the hemisphere.

A Political Force

Berta loved to say, “They fear us because we’re fearless.”

The fearlessness paid off over the years. COPINH has successfully reclaimed ancestral lands, winning unheard-of communal land titles. They’ve stalled or stopped dams, logging operations, and mining exploration — and not to mention free-trade agreements. They’ve prevented many precious and sacred places from being plundered and destroyed.

In addition to Berta’s remarkable leadership, COPINH’s victories have come through their size, strength, unity, and fierce commitment. Communities have participated in hundreds of protests, from their local mayors’ office to the steps of the national congress. They’ve occupied public spaces, including several of the six U.S. military bases in their country, and refused to leave. They’ve shut down the road to Tegucigalpa, strategically blocking goods from moving to the city. They’ve declared a boycott of all international financial institutions on their lands. They’ve helped coordinate 150 local referendums to raise the stakes on democracy.

Here’s one of many tales that Berta told of strategies and actions.

The backstory is that Honduran farmers — which most COPINH members are — wear thick work boots made of unventilated rubber. Over their course of containing sweaty feet, they come to smell horrendously, so bad that their owners often refer to them as bombas, or bombs.

Early in COPINH’s history, a team went from La Esperanza to Tegucigalpa to negotiate with the government on a land titling law. The discussions went on for days. Berta recalled that, during lunchtime, the government received lavish, catered meals; the COPINH members had no money, and so their side of the table stayed empty. Far less connected in those days, the group had nowhere to sleep or shower, and spent the nights in the streets.

At one point, the negotiations were tense and the members of COPINH’s team were shaky on their strategy. They asked for a recess, but the government refused. So someone on the COPINH side gave a discrete signal, and altogether the farmer-activists pulled off their bombas. The smell was so toxic that the government officials fled the room. COPINH was able to regroup and develop a stunning strategy. The indigenous radicals won the law.

The COPINH community of Rio Blanco — everyone: men, women, elders, toddlers, nursing mothers — formed a human barricade and blocked construction of the dam. Meanwhile, Berta, other members of COPINH, and national and international friends pressured the World Bank and the largest dam company in the world, Chinese state-owned Sinohydro, to pull out. Rio Blanco didn’t just blockade the construction for an hour or for a day, or even for a week. They did it for more than a year. They did it until they won. They got the most powerful financial interests in the world to abandon the project.

Tragically, because other financial interests are always waiting in the wings to plunder for profit, the dam is still under construction. Forty-eight more are either planned or underway on their lands.

Berta’s belief in participatory democracy extended profoundly to her everyday practice. As the unparalleled leader of COPINH, and with a large gap between her own level of education and political experience and that of all but a few in the group, it would be have been easy for her to act on her own. Yet she always made herself accountable to the communities she worked for.

I saw the degree of this commitment in action one night when Berta called in to Utopia, COPINH’s rural community meeting center, and asked to speak to everyone. Fifteen or so people quickly gathered around the cell phone on the shaky wooden table next to the only light, that of a candle. Berta explained a fairly pro forma request that had come to her from a government office, and proposed a response. When she was finished, she asked the almost exclusively illiterate group, “¿Cheque sí, o cheque no?” All raised their thumbs toward the little cell phone and called out, “Sí!” No joint decision had been required, and yet she’d sought consensus.

That’s accountability.

The Woman Behind the Myth

Berta was unflappable. She was calm in the face of chaos and strategic in the face of disaster. She got right in the face of soldiers and goons when they showed aggression toward her or others, and told them what was what.

Berta was indefatigable, working around the clock with no complaint. When not traveling around Honduras or the world to raise support for the struggle, she would wake early and go straight to her desk to receive updates, often on the most recent attacks on COPINH members, and in those cases to write condemnations — all even before a cup of coffee. She would then jump into her yellow beater truck to pick up other members of COPINH and head off to wherever action or investigation was needed.

I was amazed that Berta drove that noteworthy truck everywhere without protection, and that she lived in a house secured by only a small bolt and a couple of friendly dogs. Then I realized that it made no difference how much security she had. Though Berta also spent periods in deep hiding, the government and the companies she opposed almost always knew where she was — and how to get her when they were ready to kill her.

Berta took two small breaks in her life. The first was a two-week vacation with a friend in a neighboring country, the second a three-month semi-repose at my house in Albuquerque — though even then, she spent most of her days building a continent-wide boycott of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.

Even as she served her community, Berta rose in the past decade to become an international people’s diplomat. She was a heroine to many global movements, a critical player in many struggles, a keynote speaker at many venues. She was someone consulted by government officials, by international networks, and even, a few months ago, by Pope Francis.

As we watched Berta’s rise as a global leader, our close friend and colleague Gustavo Castro commented to me, “I hope she never loses her humility.” She never did.

I once asked Berta how to say “integrity” in Spanish. She translated it coherencia — coherence between one’s stated principles and actions, coherence amongst all parts of one’s life. Berta had coherence.

She was highly critical of U.S. Americans for our lack of that coherence. She once led an anti-oppression training for an organization I was running, in which she asked us to examine whether we were Caesars or artisans. She meant whether our practice — and not just our statements — aligned us with the oppressors or with the oppressed, and whether we were promoting the grassroots or ourselves as leaders. For a long time after, the refrigerator that Berta and I shared held her line drawing of a thonged Roman sandal.

She commented to me once that the problem with U.S. Americans is our attachment to comfort. Berta herself eschewed comfort. She lived in the modest house in which she was raised, where she cared for her elderly mother. She slept in a bare cement room, more than half of which had been converted to her office, housing her desk with its mountain range of documents and small computer table. Her trademark style — regardless of with whom she was meeting — was jeans, sneakers, and a cotton shirt. She didn’t shop, go to fancy restaurants, or take a plane when a bus was available.

Besides COPINH and the struggle for justice, Berta had another profound commitment: to her mother and her four children. I recall watching the deep pride on Berta’s face when one of her daughters, then only 7 or so, recited a poem, “Las Margaritas” (The Daisies), for a group of foreign visitors; it was a very different expression from any other I’d ever seen from her. She grew prouder as her three daughters and son grew older, all of them holding the flame for justice.

Following Berta’s murder, her children and mother issued a statement in which they said, “We know with complete certainty that the motivation for her vile assassination was her struggle against the exploitation of nature’s commonwealth and the defense of the Lenca people. Her murder is an attempt to put an end to the struggle of the Lenca people against all forms of exploitation and expulsion. It is an attempt to halt the construction of a new world.

“Berta’s struggle was not only for the environment, it was for system change, in opposition to capitalism, racism, and patriarchy.”

Back in 2013, after the Honduran government dropped sedition charges against Berta — one of its countless attempts to silence her — someone asked her mother if she was scared for her daughter. Laughing, Berta quoted her mother’s response: “Absolutely not. She’s doing exactly what she should be doing.”

Berta’s humor was legend. A joke from her, and her soft up-and-down-the-scales laugh, punctuated the most tense of moments and kept many of us going, even as she never strayed from the gravity of the situation. One of her jokes was recirculated recently by radical Honduran Jesuit priest Ismael “Melo” Moreno. He once accompanied her to Rio Blanco, where someone snapped a photo of them together. As she peered at the picture, Berta laughed and said to Melo, “Let’s see which of the two of us goes first.”

When Berta saw a performance of the Raging Grannies, a group of elder women who dress up in outrageous skirts and joyously sing protest songs at rallies and events in Albuquerque, she told me, “I never wanted to live to be an old woman. Now I do.”

A close friend and ally of Berta, Gustavo slept in her house on the last night of her life to provide accompaniment in the hope of deterring violence — something dozens of us have had to do for her over the years. Gustavo was shot twice and feigned death. Berta died in his arms.

Gustavo was immediately detained in physically and psychologically inhumane conditions by the Honduran government, and held for several days for “questioning.” The subsequent days have resembled a bad spy movie, with Gustavo finally given permission to leave the country, only to be seized at the migration checkpoint at the airport by Honduran authorities, then placed into protective custody in the Mexican Embassy — only to be handed back to the Hondurans once more, who took him back to the town of La Esperanza for more “questioning.” The Honduran government has declared that Gustavo must stay in Honduras for 30 days. He is being “protected” by the Tigers, vicious U.S.-funded and trained “special forces.”

Chillingly, according to the State Department, the United States is cooperating with the Honduran investigators. A note from a close colleague, from outside Gustavo’s place of detention, said that a team of U.S. “FBI types” were actually in the interrogation room. The role of the U.S. government in the attempted destruction of social movements in Honduras is vast.

One can draw also draw a straight line from Washington to Berta’s death. But that’s the topic of another article.

Gustavo continues to be in terrible danger in Honduran custody, as what he witnessed is an impediment to the government’s deceptive attempts to pin Berta’s murder on COPINH itself. In a note to some friends on March 6, Gustavo wrote, “The death squads know that they did not kill me, and I am certain that they want to accomplish their task.”

The Honduran government also imprisoned COPINH leader Aureliano “Lito” Molina Villanueva for two days just after Berta’s murder, on “suspicion in a crime of passion.” Authorities are interrogating COPINH leaders Tomas Gomez and Sotero Chaverria as well, while denying them lawyers. This is part of an effort to criminalize COPINH members.

Now, COPINH needs more than ever to be protected, to be supported, and to carry on the legacy that Berta helped to build.

¡Berta Lives!

Berta touched everyone she met, and even countless ones she didn’t.

My young daughter is one of those. The morning of Berta’s death, she wrote this: “I was shocked, because how can somebody kill someone who was only trying to do what’s right? Then I remembered they killed Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. If I die for doing the right thing, that would let me know that I did my part in this world. Just like Berta.”

When Berta received the 2015 Goldman Prize, the most prestigious environmental award in the world, she dedicated the prize to rebellion, to her mother, to the Lenca people, to Rio Blanco, to COPINH — and “to the martyrs who gave their lives in defense of the riches of nature.”

Now Berta is one of these martyrs.

Berta, Gustavo, and I co-founded the grassroots network Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas (COMPA) in 1999. Early on the horrific morning of March 3, a COMPA listserv note blasted the news of Berta’s assassination. Reading that message, I spotted the posting just prior, dated February 24. It was from Berta. It read simply, “Aqui!” I am here!

She is here. Long may Berta live, in the hearts, minds, passions, and actions of all of us. May all women and men commit themselves to realizing the vision of transformation, dignity, and justice for which Berta lived, and for which she died.

The deep pockets that make up America’s top 1 percent have been on quite a run. Their share of the nation’s wealth, as economist Gabriel Zucman details in a new Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality analysis, has soared from 25 percent in the 1970s to 42 percent in 2012, the most recent year with slam-dunk data.

Might the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election end that run? Maybe. Both candidates still standing in the Democratic Party primary race have proposed tax plans that would, if enacted, slow the top 1 percent wealth express. But the rates of slowdown the two candidates are proposing vary significantly.

The Tax Policy Center analysis brings into the mix all federal taxes. In other words, we’re taking not just federal income taxes here, but payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare and federal estate and excise taxes as well.

For the top 1 percent — Americans with over $732,323 in income — the changes the Clinton campaign has proposed would shrink after-tax incomes an average 5 percent, an estimated $78,284 in 2017.

These drops in after-tax income would figure to irritate America’s most financially fortunate. But that irritation would likely turn to outright outrage if the Bernie Sanders proposals ever went into effect.For the richest of America’s rich, the top 0.1 percent, the Clinton haircut would go a little closer. Taxpayers reporting over $3,769,396 in income would see their after-tax incomes drop by 7.6 percent, an average $519,741.

Under the Sanders plan, top 1 percent after-tax income would plummet 33.5 percent, a sink over six times steeper than the 5 percent dropoff in top 1 percent after-tax incomes under the Clinton plan. Bernie’s proposal would shear average top 1 percent incomes by $525,365 in 2017.

And the top 0.1 percent? America’s richest 116,000 taxpayers would see their after-tax incomes fall 44.8 percent, or $3,081,986, under the Sanders plan.

These super rich, of course, do have options. Plenty of candidates still chasing after a major party White House bid have no intention of irritating — let alone outraging — the nation’s most affluent.

Under Donald Trump’s tax plan, for instance, the after-tax incomes of the nation’s richest tenth of 1 percent would actually rise in 2017 — by an average 18.9 percent, the equivalent of $1.3 million.

That $1.3 million in one year’s tax savings just happens to add up to more money than most Americans get to earn in an entire lifetime.

In 2008, Congress passed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Recovery Plan bailout. Because of these taxpayer bailouts, more than $40 billion of the golden parachutes of CEOs and other executives of bailed-out companies that otherwise would have been lost, were saved.

Loopholes in the tax code allow corporate executives to shelter from taxes an unlimited amount of the compensation they earn each year. In contrast, non-executive workers have their 401(k) tax-deferred retirement savings capped at $18,000 a year ($24,000 if the worker is older than 50). In exchange for the lack of a cap, deferred compensation plans are held as unsecured assets of the corporation. In case of bankruptcy, deferred compensation plans, like other unsecured assets, would likely be worthless.

The No Windfalls for Bailed Out Executives Act (S. 2546), introduced in the Senate February 11 by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO), would require the clawback of deferred compensation payouts made within three years of any taxpayer-funded bailout.

“American taxpayers should never again be on the hook for lavish pay packages at bailed-out firms,” said Whitehouse. “I have a hard time explaining to Rhode Islanders why the guys who ruined the economy a few years ago got golden parachutes instead of prison jumpsuits. This simple fix will make sure that never happens again.”

Executive deferred compensation plans are a key component of the growing retirement divide in America. A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government, A Tale of Two Retirements, found that 100 top American CEOs had more retirement assets in their deferred compensation and retirement accounts than the collective retirement assets of 41 percent of America’s families.